


Advent: Zigzag

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2014 [22]
Category: Glee
Genre: Bullying, M/M, Skank!Blaine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Klaine Advent 2014 Prompt: Zigzag</p><p>(Skank!Blaine; Blaine wears his clothes like armour.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Zigzag

Blaine sees them, the ‘skanks’ as they’re known. He sees them in a way few others do. He sees the way they congregate together and head as a pack beneath the bleachers, sees the way nobody sees them, the way nobody messes with them or touches their stuff. He sees how they’re strong together, how they survive, and he thinks, ‘I could do that. I could be that.’ He pulls his sweater sleeves over his hands, and vanishes into the crowds in the hallways, eyes down, and tries to make it to the end of the day.

*

He starts with his jeans. On his kitchen table, he takes scissors to a pair of black jeans, rips into the hems, the knees, all the places that should look old and worn. He does the same to an old hoodie, finds a jacket in his wardrobe he’s had no excuse to wear, and teams both with a pair of short boots. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. He heads into school the next day, heads for the bleachers, and finds his in with a pink-haired girl he’s seen around a lot, who was pregnant last year and who says she recognises a need to escape, to not be seen, to belong somewhere. She gives him gum and a soft smile that she seems to mean.

"It’s not easy," she says, "Not meeting people’s expectations. That’s what’s good here. There aren’t any."

She takes him under her wing, buys him cigarettes and teaches him how to roll the carton in his sleeve, teaches him an appraising stare that’s intimidating enough to imply he could break someone’s face except it’s too much effort. “They should think they’re not worth your manicure,” she says. He nods, and he absorbs. He learns and he grows.

She always has a cigarette between her fingers when she’s beneath the bleachers. Blaine doesn’t like the taste. On top of that, he’s also worried about his voice. She laughs gently and tilts her head appraisingly. “Meet me here after school,” she says. “We’re going shopping.”

He does. They do. She gets a tattoo - Ryan Seacrest on her lower back, which Blaine knows she’ll regret before it’s healed - and they go together to Claire’s, where she fills a basket full of cheap accessories, from hair extensions to magnetic earrings to wrist cuffs. “You gotta look like you belong,” she says matter of factly. “You and I don’t belong. We have to work to fit in.”

"Story of my life," he says, and she stares at him appraisingly, arches both eyebrows.

"You don’t look like you have much to worry about, Fred Perry," she says, and he wants to laugh but it’s still sort of raw.

"Yeah," he says. "Neither do you. Pretty, cheerleader, white and middle class."

"Like you’re so different, Blaine."

Blaine won’t defend his need to hide, to assimilate to a group with power, but he can feel the ice in her words. He can feel shame. She doesn’t need his animosity. “Sorry,” he says. She shrugs.

"We’re all wounded," she replies. "Some of us it’s endemic, cultural, expected. Some of us need to be here. It’s all valid."

Blaine looks at her, her pink hair, her dirty two hundred dollar dress, and he thinks she’s exactly what he needs. In another life, Quinn could have been a friend.

*

Quinn leaves though. For her, assimilation into a different culture suits her needs better. To get out, she has to pretend differently. She dyes her hair blonde again, says the right words, and skips out after school to talk with him in one of their cars. She’s sweet and she’s a great actress, because Blaine knows she’s not okay and no one seems to care.

Into the void left by Quinn Fabray stumbles Tina Cohen-Chang. She’s direct as well, and equally blunt. She doesn’t sugar coat anything she says, and she says almost everything she thinks. In different ways to Quinn, Tina straddles the line between social misfit and almost acceptable, despite being an obvious McKinley minority. She’s Korean and she’s Jewish and she’s adopted, but she has mainstream friends. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t found her in the bathroom washing fructose from her bra, swearing at the mirror and the cutie who helps her clean up.

His name is Kurt, and he’s met Blaine’s stare in the mirror more than once. His eyes are always guarded, and Blaine gets the sense that Kurt, too, could rip his face off except that he’s not worth the manicure.

Blaine has never been so turned on.

Tina hangs around the parking lot after school. She sits on the hood of Blaine’s car, her jacket buttoned up to her throat. Blaine sits with her and they share class notes, trade stories. Tina is the first person to ask him about his parents, and he shrugs non-committally. He has two. She nods and rummages in her bag, and Blaine stares at the black lace of her gloves and the blue streaks in her hair and thinks about how her smile lights up her face when she beams at him. He’d like to make her smile more often, so he says, “Do you want to come back to mine? I can help you with your history?” She glances up at him, and then her eyes sparkle, and she bumps his shoulder with hers.

“Aww, Blainey-days,” she says. He doesn’t know where that’s come from, but he’ll take it. The affection is clear in her voice.

At home, Blaine shucks the ripped jeans in favour of bright yellow highwaters. He takes the pink out of his hair and washes his face clean, trades his leather jacket for a red polo shirt, and trips back down the stairs on bare feet. Tina has her face in his refrigerator when he gets back to the kitchen. Her boots sit underneath his table, and her high collar military coat is thrown over a chair. Beneath it she wears a flattering colour block mod dress. She turns to face him, and then they’re both laughing.

“I knew it,” she says, when she can speak again, and he points at her, gestures her dress.

“What about you?” he asks. “You’re not exactly what I was expecting either.”

“I once convinced Figgins I was a vampire,” she says with a casual shrug. “It work to keep that up. I haven’t done phys-ed all year and he’s afraid to make me.”

Blaine can understand that. No one has muttered ‘fag’ at him in months. No one has asked what it’s like growing up in the shadow of Cooper Anderson, or sung that ridiculous jingle to him, or asked about his parents’ relationship. When his hair is pink, when he’s wearing eyeliner and hanging around with the losers underneath the bleachers with a cigarette behind his ear, no one sees him at all. He can go to class, sit in the back and take his notes, skip school assemblies and never face the horrors of the changing rooms until after school, when he can take his accumulated frustrations out on a punching bag without audience, and no one questions him. He just needs to graduate. College will be easier. That much is certain. He will get out of Ohio, go to New York or California… Or, if he could just get to Columbus, he wouldn’t look back.

“Yeah,” he says and nods. “I get it.”

Tina nods and Blaine smiles, and just like that, he thinks he’s genuinely made a friend.

*

He sees Tina around school with the cutie from the bathroom, with Kurt. Kurt, who everyone knows is gay and who doesn’t seem to care. Tina obviously doesn’t, from the way she touches him and laughs with him. Blaine wonders whether she’d have the same reaction to him if he told her, and thinks, when the opportunity next arises, he’ll tell her. At the very least, he’d like to think she wouldn’t shun him as if his touch were poison, they way his own friends had in middle school. Blaine’s not ashamed of it, but he’s never expected that Lima, Ohio would provide him with opportunity to act on it.

But there he is, walking around school in designer threads that he wears layered like armour, his head held high as if sheer force of will can change the world.

Blaine wants to kiss him so much it aches.

When Tina comes to his house for food, both of them sitting on his bed sharing a plate of cookies and trading notes and song recommendations, Blaine singing his favourites for her, to her increasing incredulity and fervent encouragement that he should try for Glee club, he thinks he could maybe tell her today. He cycles through to the parts of his playlist that he has hidden up to this point, to Wham and Katy Perry. Tina looks at him through her bangs.

“I know, Blaine,” she says, and he frowns at her. Her smile is soft, sweet, and he thinks more people should know her like this. She could rule the school like this.

“You know what?”

“That you’re gay,” she says, matter of fact. He’s never heard it quite like that, without fanfare or accusation. He blinks at her. She laughs and pushes her hair back behind her ears. “I’ve worn some of the shortest dresses I own,” she says. “I’ve revealed more of my cleavage than I’ve shown anyone. You’re one of two boys I know who don’t seem to notice or care.”

Blaine breathes in through his nose and exhales slowly. He wants to say the words regardless of their impact, but he hasn’t spoken them aloud in four years. “I’m gay,” he says, and she rests her hand on his, squeezes gently. Tears prickle behind his eyes. It hasn’t been a secret, but he’s never had anyone close enough to tell. Her smile is just for him, warm and full of love.

“All the cute boys are,” she sighs dramatically, and he pulls her toward him in a hug that she returns.

In his chest, his heart expands. He’s 17 years old, and his best friend doesn’t care that he’s gay. It feels like a revelation.

*

They’re in Tina’s car sheltering from the rain the first time he directly asks her about Kurt. She glances at him, and turns the radio down.

“What do you want to know?” she asks. Blaine shrugs.

“I don’t know. What he likes?”

“Flowers,” she says. “Fashion. Scarves. Barbra Streisand. Lady Gaga. Boys.”

Blaine nods and stares at the dash, at his fingernails, at everything that isn’t Tina. She touches his knee and he turns his head. She reaches to flatten his hair with her hands.

“You,” she says, gently.

Blaine feels the blood in his cheeks and swallows hard. “Really?”

“He’d never admit it,” she says. “But I’ve seen the way he watches you when he thinks no one is looking. I’ve heard him speaking to Quinn.”

Blaine’s pretty sure it must be Christmas.

*

Towards the end of his junior year, Blaine makes a decision. He decides he wants to ask Kurt to Prom. He spends an hour in his bedroom choosing his outfit and combing his hair. Out of the back of his closet, he retrieves a box full of strips of silk, ties a bow at his throat and frowns at himself. He hasn’t dressed like this since before he came out, since before it became apparent that he couldn’t dress like this without risking his own safety in a public school. That was before he’d seen Kurt, though, before Tina and the knowledge that the key to invincibility was acting like you were unaffected by pondlife, like you were two miles tall and couldn’t see the malice aimed at you. Tina says it doesn’t stop it, but it helps to rise above. He’s standing in front of his mirror wearing red jeans and boat shoes with a black polo shirt and a pink tie. He sprays himself with his favourite cologne and grabs a cardigan from his door on his way down the stairs. His mom watches him poor juice and make toast and says nothing until he’s slinging his bag across his chest.

“Can we throw those jeans away, Blaine?” she asks, and he glances back at her from the door, his car keys in his hand.

“Yeah,” he says after a beat, smiles the biggest he has in a year. “Maybe?”

She nods and smiles back, and he bounces out of the door.

*

Blaine pulls into the parking lot and takes a moment to sit in his car and just breathe. At the other end of the lot, he can see Kurt’s Navigator. He’d hoped to be here early enough to beat Kurt in, to meet him at his locker and maybe speak to him before the hallways started to fill. He’d wanted to avoid an audience. There’s no chance of that now, though. Kurt is here, and he could be anywhere. He pushes open his door, busies himself with retrieving his books from the passenger seat, and gets out of the car slowly.

It’s as he puts his keys into his bag and looks around him that he sees Kurt leaning against his car. He has Doc Martens on that come up his calves, snug and beautiful. His jeans look almost painted on, and his hair is higher than Blaine has ever seen it. The leather of his jacket looks soft and tactile, and Blaine’s mouth goes dry. He can feel the air around his ankles, the blood pooling in his sockless feet, and his whole body feels leaden. He touches the perfect styling of his own gel-tamed hair and swallows hard. He stands perfectly still, staring over the top of his car at Kurt, who finally turns his head and meets his gaze, straightening slowly. From the other side of Kurt’s Navigator, Quinn appears, follows Kurt’s eyeline to see Blaine, who feels like a circus clown in his own costume suddenly. He sees the laugh that bubbles out of Quinn, and can’t quite make himself return it, much as the irony isn’t lost on him.

Behind him, he hears Tina’s music pull in and cut off, and smells her perfume as she appears beside him, staring across the car roofs with him.

“Oh,” she says, and her laugh breaks him from his trance. “Oh my god.” 

When he looks at her, she’s staring at him. “You’re both such dumbasses,” she says. “You could have just said hello?”

Blaine can’t stop the panicked laugh that wells inside of him, but at least he’s laughing. Tina takes his hand and they cross the lot together.


End file.
